Last year, WaterAid and HSBC launched a programme that delivers essential water, sanitation and hygiene services (known collectively as WASH) to apparel factories and nearby worker communities in Bangladesh and India.

The supply chains projects ensure that the investments in WASH extend beyond the workplace, improving not only the health and quality of life for workers and their families, but also increasing supply chain resilience and business productivity. Sustainable water use means more sustainable fashion through fairer working environments.

Meet Momena, whose life has been transformed by the simple yet vital introduction of clean water, decent toilets and somewhere to wash her hands whilst at work, thanks to WaterAid’s work.

Momena Khatun, 32, works as a sewing operator at a ready-made garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her husband Kabir Mia also works in the factory and, although the family faces struggles financially, their two sons attend school, improving their life-chances for the future.

WaterAid, together with the factory owners, had already lowered water-abstraction rates through the construction of rainwater-harvesting systems. The next focus moved to improve access to drinking water, toilets and handwashing facilities not only in the factory, but also at home – where the situation is invariably far worse.

The family’s rented room in Naraynaganj, south-east of Dhaka, is convenient for work, but the standard of living in the building was dire. There were only two toilets for the entire block of at least 40 people, and they were filthy, unhygienic and hazardous.

To make matters worse, there was nowhere to wash your hands. Unsurprisingly, the children often prefered to go outside instead, increasing their vulnerability to diarrhoeal diseases, sickness and days off school.

With no other option, every morning the tenants argued over who was next in line for the bathrooms. Every day, Momena faced the grim choice of either being late for work, which reflected negatively on her performance; or leaving home without going to the toilet at all, ultimately leading to health problems and pain.

That horrendous situation has now changed. WaterAid, with funding from HSBC, has renovated the facilities in this tenancy and others like it. Three new toilet facilities have recently been constructed, all with separate cubicles for men and women, ensuring dignity, safety and privacy. In addition, the residents now have segregated bathing facilities with handwashing facilities and safe drinking water points.

“Separate female toilets and bathing facilities have dramatically changed our living conditions for the better! We faced real difficulties in using toilets in the morning in front of men”, explained Momena.

“Now I am comfortable and not hesitant to use the toilets and take showers when I need. The new look and cleanliness of the toilet and hygiene messages have encouraged us to maintain our toilets well. I am very happy and thankful to the project for their support to our community”.

A feeling of ownership of these new facilities has increased their chances of being properly managed and sustainably maintained. With this in mind, both the tenants and landlords were fully engaged in the project, and they discussed how everyone can play a part in ensuring the new water, sanitation and hygiene facilities remain hygienic and clean.

This renovation work has undoubtedly been transformational. The enhanced living conditions – now giving the garment workers access to clean water and decent sanitation facilities – have made a huge impact on the community’s lives. Now, Momena has a smoother morning bathroom routine and is rarely late for work.

Clean water, sanitation and hygiene have the power to change-for-good millions of lives like Momena’s. She and her community now have the potential to live healthy, productive and dignified lives.

WaterAid is leading work to improve WASH provision in the factory where Momena works. This collective work by WaterAid, funded by HSBC, will enable the trial and testing of the financial return on investment in these basic human rights of water and sanitation.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/fairer-fashion-begins-better-access-water-toilets-workers-clothing-supply-chains/feed/0Let’s Walk the Talk to Defeat Climate Change – African Leaders Toldhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/lets-walk-talk-defeat-climate-change-african-leaders-told/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=lets-walk-talk-defeat-climate-change-african-leaders-told
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/lets-walk-talk-defeat-climate-change-african-leaders-told/#respondWed, 28 Aug 2019 15:05:56 +0000Isaiah Esipisuhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163026African leaders have been asked to walk the talk, and lead from the front, in order to build resilience and adaptation to the adverse impacts of climate change on the continent. This was the message conveyed by several speakers at the ongoing eighth Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA) conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. […]

African leaders have been asked to walk the talk, and lead from the front, in order to build resilience and adaptation to the adverse impacts of climate change on the continent.

This was the message conveyed by several speakers at the ongoing eighth Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA) conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

“Our first urgent action is to build the Resilience and Adaptation to the adverse impacts of climate change for the most vulnerable communities across Africa,” said Dr James Kinyangi, the Chief Climate Policy Officer at the African Development Bank (AfDB), as he articulated commitments by the Bank on tackling climate change.

“The time is now, to translate the (2015 Paris) agreement into concrete action, to safeguard development gains and address the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable,” he told the CCDA forum which brings together policy makers, civil society, youth, private sector, academia and development partners every year to discuss climate emerging issues and to review progress ahead of the UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP).

“We must challenge our leaders to walk the talk, and lead from the front in the spirit of the UN Secretary General, who recently pointed out that beautiful speeches are not enough to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement,” said Mithika Mwenda, the Secretary General for the Pan Africa Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) an umbrella organization of over 1000 Africa environment and climate civil society groups.

So far, 53 African countries have committed to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to slow down the impact of climate change, identifying the need for an estimated USD 3.5 – 4 trillion of investment by 2030.

According to Kinyangi, these commitments present an opportunity for the AfDB to contribute to policies and actions that mobilise the financial resources needed to support long-term investments in resilience and Africa’s transition to low carbon development.

In a recently published interview, AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina said: “Africa cannot adapt to climate change through words. It can only adapt to climate change through resources.”

“Africa has been shortchanged in terms of climate change because the continent accounts for only 4 percent of greenhouse gas emissions but it suffers disproportionately from the negative impacts,” he declared.

He said AfDB is leading an effort to create an African Financial Alliance for climate, which will bring together financial institutions, stock exchanges, and central banks in Africa, to develop an endogenous financing model that would support Africa to adapt to climate change without depending on anybody else outside the continent.

Early this year, tropical cyclones, Idai and Kenneth ripped through five African countries – Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and the Comoros both within a period of one month.

Kenneth is on record as the strongest storm ever to make landfall, while Idai, is the worst ever storm in terms of loss and damages to hit the African continent, where more than 1,000 lives were lost with damage of property worth 1 billion US dollars.

“In Sudan, we have just won a democratic struggle, but we are faced by another catastrophic ecological crisis of monumental proportion, which, last week alone, killed at least 62 people and destroyed 37,000 homes,” said Nisreen Eslaim, a climate activist from Sudan, referring to floods that recently swept through the city of Khartoum.

Since the threat of floods, droughts and heatwaves will be amplified with increasing climate variability, experts believe that the best response strategy is one that improves the resilience of economies, infrastructure, ecosystems and societies to climate variability and change.

“As much as we are trying to respond to climate related calamities, we need longer-term action for disaster risk management. Hence, a reason why we must do whatever it takes to implement the Paris Agreement,” Kinyangi told IPS.

To support African countries adapt to climate change, AfDB has committed to ensuring that at least 40 percent of its project approvals are tagged as climate finance by 2020, with equal proportions for adaptation and mitigation. The bank also seeks to mainstream climate change and green growth initiatives into all investments by next year.

“As much as we will be mobilizing significantly, more new and additional climate finance, to Africa by 2020, we will keep pushing the rich countries to deliver on the pledged 100 billion dollars each year,” said Kinyangi.

“As we know, our leaders’ focus is slowly but surely turning to other issues dominating international diplomatic interactions such as Iran/US tiff, Brexit, Terrorism and the emerging extreme right-wing movements, which constitute a risk of increased climate scepticism,” said Mwenda.

“Our only hope is unity of purpose, and the purpose which brings us here in Addis Ababa – to contribute to a process which will shape the future of humanity and health of the planet,” added the PACJA boss.

According to Ambassador Josefa Sacko, the Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture at the Africa Union Commission, there is need for increased ambition in the fight against climate change.

“Without ambitious and urgent global commitments to tackle climate change, the ability of most African countries to attain the Sustainable Development Goals and the ideals of Africa’s Agenda 2063 remain elusive,” she said.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, has convened a Climate Action Summit September 23 at the United Nations in New York, and has called on all leaders to come to the summit with concrete, ambitious and realistic plans to enhance their nationally determined contributions by 2020, in line with reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent over the next decade, and to net zero emissions by 2050 as called for by the IPCC special report.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/lets-walk-talk-defeat-climate-change-african-leaders-told/feed/0Disaster Risk Resilience: Key to Protecting Vulnerable Communitieshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/disaster-risk-resilience-key-protecting-vulnerable-communities/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=disaster-risk-resilience-key-protecting-vulnerable-communities
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/disaster-risk-resilience-key-protecting-vulnerable-communities/#respondWed, 28 Aug 2019 07:23:40 +0000Armida Salsiah Alisjahbanahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163020Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

By Armida Salsiah AlisjahbanaBANGKOK, Thailand, Aug 28 2019 (IPS)

The past five years have been the hottest on record in Asia and the Pacific. Unprecedented heatwaves have swept across our region, cascading into slow onset disasters such as drought. Yet heat is only part of the picture. Tropical cyclones have struck new, unprepared parts of our region and devastatingly frequent floods have ensued. In Iran, these affected 10 million people this year and displaced 500,000 of which half were children. Bangladesh is experiencing its fourth wave of flooding in 2019. Last year, the state of Kerala in India faced the worst floods in a century.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

This is the new climate reality in Asia and the Pacific. The scale of forecast economic losses for the region is sobering. Including slow-onset disasters, average annualised losses until 2030 are set to quadruple to about $675 billion compared to previous estimates. This represents 2.4 percent of the region’s GDP. Economic losses of such magnitude will undermine both economic growth and our region’s efforts to reduce poverty and inequality, keeping children out of schools and adults of work. Basic health services will be undermined, crops destroyed and food security jeopardised. If we do not act now, Asia-Pacific’s poorest communities will be among the worst affected.

Four areas of Asia and the Pacific are particularly impacted, hotspots which combine vulnerability to climate change, poverty and disaster risk. In transboundary river basins in South and South-East Asia such as the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river basin, floods alternate with prolonged droughts. In South-East Asia and East and North-East Asia earthquakes, tsunamis and landslides threaten poor populations in the Pacific Ring of Fire. Intensifying sand and dust storms are blighting East, Central and South-west Asia. Vulnerable populations in Pacific Small Islands Developing States are five times more at risk of disasters than a person in South and South-East Asia. Many countries’ sustainable development prospects are now directly dependent on their exposure to natural disasters and their ability to build resilience.

Yet this vicious cycle between poverty, inequalities and disasters is not inevitable. It can be broken if an integrated approach is taken to investing in social and disaster resilience policies. As disasters disproportionately affect the poor, building resilience must include investment in social protection as the most effective means of reducing poverty. Conditional cash transfer systems can be particularly effective as was shown in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. Increasing pre-arranged risk finance and climate risk insurance is also crucial. While investments needed are significant, in most countries these are equivalent to less than half the costs forecast to result from natural disasters.

The use of technological innovations to protect the region from natural disasters must go hand in hand with these investments. Big data reveal patterns and associations between complex disaster risks and predict extreme weather and slow onset disasters to improve the readiness of our economies and our societies. In countries affected by typhoons, big data applications can make early warning systems stronger and can contribute to saving lives and reducing damage. China and India are leading the way in using technology to warn people of impending disasters, make their infrastructure more resilient and deliver targeted assistance to affected farmers and citizens.

Asia and the Pacific can learn from this best practice and multilateral cooperation is the way to give scale to our region’s disaster resilience effort. With this ambition in mind, representatives from countries across the region are meeting in Bangkok this week at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) to explore regional responses to natural disasters. Their focus will include strengthening Asia-Pacific’s Disaster Resilience Network and capitalising on innovative technology applications for the benefit of the broader region. This is our opportunity to replicate successes, accelerate drought mitigation strategies and develop a regional sand and dust storm alert system. I hope the region can seize it to protect vulnerable communities from disaster risk in every corner of Asia and the Pacific.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/disaster-risk-resilience-key-protecting-vulnerable-communities/feed/0How to Bring the Indus Delta Back to Life – Give it Waterhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/bring-indus-delta-back-life-give-water/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bring-indus-delta-back-life-give-water
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/bring-indus-delta-back-life-give-water/#respondWed, 21 Aug 2019 12:30:02 +0000Zofeen Ebrahimhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162932Gulab Shah, 45, is having sleepless nights. He and his family are worried about their imminent migration from their village in Jhaloo to a major city in Pakistan, thanks to the continued ingress of sea water inland. “That is all that I and my brothers discuss day and night,” he told IPS over telephone from […]

Farmers on the Indus River Delta. Over the years the water has dried up and sea has ingressed inland. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen EbrahimKARACHI, Aug 21 2019 (IPS)

Gulab Shah, 45, is having sleepless nights. He and his family are worried about their imminent migration from their village in Jhaloo to a major city in Pakistan, thanks to the continued ingress of sea water inland.

“That is all that I and my brothers discuss day and night,” he told IPS over telephone from his village which lies near Kharo Chan, in Sindh province’s Thatta district.

He and his family also talk about what it “will mean living among strangers, in a strange place; adopting an unfamiliar lifestyle; losing culture and identity”.

Of the nearly 6,000 acres of land that Shah’s father inherited, over 2,500 acres have slowly been swallowed by the sea over the last 70 years.

And even though they still have enough land to sell to enable them to set up their home in a city, “there are no buyers!” Shah proclaimed.

“Nobody wants to buy land that they know is going to be submerged soon,” he said.

And if they stay, they do not have enough farm hands to work on their land. “Every year more and more people, mostly farmhands, are moving out of here as there is less work for them,” Shah explained.

For millions of years, the River Indus sustained the marshes, the 17 creeks, miles of swamps, mangrove forests and the mudflats along with the various estuarine habitats in the fan-shaped Indus delta, before reaching its final destination and emptying into the Arabian Sea. It marks a journey of 3,000 km from the Himalayas.

Generations of families have lived in the Indus River Delta. But as the flow of the river has reduced drastically over the years many are leaving and making their way to the cities in search of a better way of life. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

Today this Ramsar Site, a wetland of international importance, is parched and dying a slow death.

The dams and barrages on the river sucked the fresh river and stopped it from reaching the delta. It also resulted in a reduction of sediment deposition, giving the sea a perfect opportunity to ingress into the land.

Climate change has had an impact too here. The rains are unpredictable now, water levels don’t increase and conversely over the years there has been an increased demand for water for both agricultural activities and a growing population.

If the delta gets 10 million acre feet (MAF) consistently over the 12 months, or 5,000 cubic feet per seconds daily, as promised through the provincial water apportionment Accord of 1991, the delta would thrive.

However, that is not the case. “Along the way, from the mountains to the sea, there is shortage, pilferagecoupled with losses due to an ageing distribution system,” explained Usman Tanveer, the deputy commissioner or principal representative of the provincial government in the district of Thatta.

“We require a well regulated water management system from the time the water leaves the mountains till it reaches the Arabian Sea,” he told IPS.

He pointed out that as a specialised subject, water needs to be looked into more scientifically. For example, said Tanveer, “First and foremost, we need proper research and experts to be able to plan for future water needs and this includes coming up with finding optimal conservation solutions, natural sites if small dams have to be built (instead of frowning upon whenever the D [dam] word is brought up).”

“We need to have a legal framework in place so thefts are deterred, and most importantly, an integrated mechanism to collect water cess from every user,” he concluded.

A 2018 report by United States-Pakistan Centre for Advanced Studies in Water (USPCASW) at Mehran University of Engineering and Technology (MUET), Jamshoro, using historical maps and field research, noted that back in 1833 the delta spanned some 12,900 square kilometres (sq km); today it was a mere 1,000 sq km.

“The human impact on the environment, the change in the natural flow of the river, resulting in reduction in sediment deposition, and sea-level ingress and climate change have resulted in the contraction of the delta,” said Dr. Altaf Ali Siyal, who heads the Integrated Water Resources Management Department (IWRM) at USPCASW, and is the principal author of the delta report.The study concluded the delta today constitutes just 8 to 10 percent of its original expanse.

But many living in the delta believed it would begin to die when man reined in the mighty Indus. The construction of the Sukkur barrage (1923 to 1932) by the British, followed by Kotri barrage in 1955 and Guddu in 1962, squeezed the life out of the once-verdant delta.

Prior to this Sindh province received 150 MAF of water annually, now it is less than one-tenth of this at only 10 MAF annually. “It would be even better if it receives between 25 to 35 MAF water so that it can return to its past grandeur,” Siyal told IPS.

Take the case of the Shah’s land.

“Till 10 years back about 400 acres were still cultivable,” said Shah. However, this year, they were able to cultivate just 150 acres. “Acute water shortages on the one hand and increased salinity on the other, has made it impossible to till all of our land,” he explained.

Until the 1990s his family grew the “sweetest bananas” and the finest vegetables on over 400 acres of land. They had led a prosperous life.

All of that is lost now.

Two years back, because of acute shortage of water, Shah and his brothers decided to grow the heart-shaped green betel leaf, locally called paan, over 12 acres of land.

But Dr. Hassan Abbas, an expert in hydrology and water resources has both long term and short term solutions to revive the delta.

“One would be to rejuvenate the natural course of the river the way United Kingdom, the United States and even Australia are by dismantling dams and adopting the free flowing river model,” he told IPS.

“A free flowing model is one where water, silt, and other natural materials can move along unobstructed. But more importantly, it’s one by which the ecological integrity of the entire river system is maintained as a whole,” explained Abbas.

The other, more imminent, solution is to address the way farmers irrigate. “We need to make agriculture water-efficient without compromising on our yield. The water saved thus can be allowed to flow back into its course and regenerate the delta.”

Hehas a pilot in mind that can build the confidence and capacity of the farmers when it comes to water-efficient farming, and at the same time, stopping the supply of water in that area by blocking one canal.

“See if it is socially and economically acceptable to the farmers and the environmental benefits accrued,” he said, adding, “If there is a positive side, more canals can be closed.”

However, a quick and cost-effective manner of addressing water shortage, in cities like Karachi, said Abbas, was through exploiting the riverine corridors of active floodplains.

“The Indus has 6.5 km of flood plain on either side which has sweet sand under which is the cleanest mineral water you can get. Most of the big cities are not more than 3km away from the river bed. All that needs to be done is to pump that water up from the depth of 300 to 400 feet using, say solar energy, and supply it to the cities through pipes,” explained the hydrologist.

But what about the Shah’s village in the delta?

“It is far, about 200 km from the river,” agreed Abbas, conceding the people in the delta urgently needed to be supplied with drinking water.

“It would require a much longer pipeline, but would still be cheaper to transport the same water that way,” he said.

According to him, there is anywhere from 350 to 380 MAF of water available in the riverine aquifer. “We Pakistanis need at the most 15 or a maximum of 20 MAF/year, (this is excluding water for agriculture) to meet our needs. It is a much cheaper option at two to three billion dollars than a dam costing 17 billion dollars!”

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/bring-indus-delta-back-life-give-water/feed/0Extreme Floods, the Key to Climate Change Adaptation in Africa’s Drylandshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/extreme-floods-key-climate-change-adaptation-africas-drylands/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=extreme-floods-key-climate-change-adaptation-africas-drylands
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/extreme-floods-key-climate-change-adaptation-africas-drylands/#respondThu, 08 Aug 2019 09:44:52 +0000Isaiah Esipisuhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162759Extreme rainfall and heavy flooding, often amplified by climate change, causes devastation among communities. But new research published on Aug. 7 in the scientific journal Nature reveals that these dangerous events are extremely significant in recharging groundwater aquifers in drylands across sub-Saharan Africa, making them important for climate change adaptation. According to the research, which […]

A borehole in Kenya's Turkana County. Experts say that groundwater in drylands is recharged through extreme floods. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah EsipisuTURKANA COUNTY, Kenya, Aug 8 2019 (IPS)

Extreme rainfall and heavy flooding, often amplified by climate change, causes devastation among communities. But new research published on Aug. 7 in the scientific journal Nature reveals that these dangerous events are extremely significant in recharging groundwater aquifers in drylands across sub-Saharan Africa, making them important for climate change adaptation.

According to the research, which was led by the University College London (UCL) and Cardiff University, this vital source of water for drinking and irrigation across sub-Saharan Africa is resilient to climate variability and change.

“Our study reveals, for the first time, how climate plays a dominant role in controlling the process by which groundwater is restocked,” Richard Taylor, a Professor of Hydrogeology from UCL, told IPS. Taylor is the co-lead on the new study, which was conducted with a consortium of 32 scientists from different universities and institutions from Africa and beyond.

Researchers reviewed data sets of water levels from 14 wells across the region that are not generally used by people.

“Our data-driven results imply greater resilience to climate change than previously supposed in many locations from a groundwater perspective and thus question, for example, the model-driven [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] IPCC consensus that ‘Climate change is projected to reduce renewable surface water and groundwater resources significantly in most dry subtropical regions,’” Taylor said in a statement.

The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report states in contrast that “climate change over the twenty-first century is projected to reduce renewable surface water and groundwater resources significantly in most dry subtropical regions, intensifying competition for water among sectors”.

Groundwater plays a central role in sustaining water supplies and livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa due to its widespread availability, generally high quality, and intrinsic ability to buffer episodes of drought and increasing climate variability.

So the finding comes as good news for communities and governments across Africa where livelihoods are becoming more and more dependent on groundwater.
“In our current budget, we have allocated over Sh164 million (1.64 million dollars) to irrigation projects, and most of the water already being used is from boreholes,” Chris Aleta, Kenya’s Turkana County Minister for Water and Irrigation, told IPS.

Turkana is a pastoral county and one of the driest in Kenya. Research has revealed that between 1977 and 2016, cattle, which is the main source of livelihood in this county, reduced by 60 percent.

Currently thousands of households are producing horticultural crops that are sold locally in major towns and even overseas.

“Some of us do not have a single cow to graze,” Paul Samal, a pastoralist-turned-farmer from Kaptir Ward, Turkana County, told IPS.

“I had over 200 goats and a herd of 50 cattle, but most of them were consumed by the drought in 2011, and the remaining stock was stolen in 2015,” said the father of five.
So in 2016 he began using groundwater to grow tomatoes, watermelons and indigenous vegetables.

Kenya’s neighbour Tanzania will also benefit from the findings.The country’s capital city Dodoma relies solely in groundwater from the Makutapora well field.

According to Lister Kongola, a retired hydrologist who worked for the government of Tanzania from 1977 to 2012, the demand for water in Dodoma City has been rising over the years, from 20 million litres per day (l/day) in the 1970s, to 30 million l/day in the 1980s and to the current 61 million l/day.

The World Bank estimates that at least 70 percent of over 250 million people living in southern African countries rely on groundwater as their primary source of water for drinking, sanitation and livelihood support through agriculture, ecosystem health, and industrial growth.

According to scientists, understanding the nexus of climate extremes and groundwater replenishment is vital for sustainability. This improved understanding is also critical for producing reliable climate change impact projections and adaptation strategies.

The new study also found that unlike drylands, where leakage from seasonal streams, rivers and ponds replenish groundwater, in humid areas groundwater is replenished primarily by rainfall directly infiltrating the land surface.

“This finding is important because model-based assessments of groundwater resources currently ignore the contribution of leaking streams and ponds to groundwater supplies, underestimating its renewability in drylands and resilience to climate change,” said Dr Mark Cuthbert, a research scientist from Cardiff University.

According to Michael Arunga of World Vision, an international humanitarian agency that sometimes supports communities during extreme climate events, the findings are vital for spatial planning for governments in Africa.

“The good thing is that extreme droughts and rainfall seasons are predictable, and the patterns are the same across Africa,” Arunga told IPS.
“These findings will therefore make it easier for governments to draft policies for sustainable groundwater use based on knowledge.”

Since extreme floods can easily be predicted up to nine months in advance, the researchers say that there is a possibility of designing schemes to enhance groundwater recharge by capturing a portion of flood discharges via a process known as Managed Aquifer Recharge.

According to Prof Daniel Olago, a senior lecturer at the Department of Geology, University of Nairobi, groundwater in Africa remains a hidden resource that has not been studied exhaustively.

“When people want to access groundwater, they ask experts to go out there and do a hydro-geophysical survey basically to site a borehole without necessarily understanding the characteristics of that particular aquifer,” he told IPS.

However, in the recent past, the United Kingdom research councils (Natural Environment Research Council, Economic and Social Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), the Department for International Development (DFID) and The Royal Society have been supporting studies that seek to understand the potential of groundwater resources in Africa, and how it can be used to alleviate poverty.

“Moving into the 21st century with climate change, with growing population, with rapid growing urban centres, groundwater is going to be very important,” said Olago.

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]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/extreme-floods-key-climate-change-adaptation-africas-drylands/feed/0A Call for Healthy, Blue Oceans in Asia and the Pacifichttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/call-healthy-blue-oceans-asia-pacific/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=call-healthy-blue-oceans-asia-pacific
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/call-healthy-blue-oceans-asia-pacific/#respondMon, 05 Aug 2019 11:35:57 +0000Armida Salsiah Alisjahbanahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162694Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

Leaders at the Group of 20 summit last month agreed on the “Osaka Blue Ocean Vision,” which aims to reduce additional pollution by marine plastic litter to zero by 2050. The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) stands ready to support Japan and other countries in the region to ensure healthy and sustainable oceans.

Approximately 8 million tons of plastic leaks out of the global economy and into the oceans each year. Asia and the Pacific is responsible for about 60 percent of the increase in global plastic production.

Without action, the world’s oceans will contain nearly 250 million tons of plastic by 2025, further endangering our marine environment with a wide range of toxins and ultimately putting our own food sources at risk.

The commitment of G20 leaders, led by Japan, to tackle the proliferation of plastic litter through the Osaka Blue Ocean Vision aligns with the first target of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14 (Life Below Water), which is to prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution, by 2025.

G20 leaders also reiterated that measures to address marine litter need to be taken nationally and internationally by all countries in partnership with relevant stakeholders. In the Asia-Pacific region, several countries have already adopted plans to combat marine plastic debris by banning single-use plastics and enacting new recycling laws.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s launch of the “MARINE Initiative” (focusing on management of wastes, recovery of marine litter, innovation and empowerment) at the G20 summit to support developing countries’ efforts, including their capacity building and infrastructure development, in waste management is a good demonstration of the kind of regional cooperation on trans-boundary issues where ESCAP can play a key role.

ESCAP’s next annual meeting, in May 2020, will feature the theme “Promoting economic, social and environmental cooperation on oceans for sustainable development.” One possible outcome of our deliberations is the creation of a voluntary “coalition of the willing” to reduce plastic marine pollution.

In a region already under stress from climate change, resource exploitation and population growth, healthy oceans mean jobs, food, identity and resilience for millions, especially the most vulnerable and disadvantaged.

The coalition would be a regional multi-stakeholder platform that would provide technical assistance and capacity building support. In line with the G20 approach, governments would be joined in this coalition by the private sector, civil society organizations, research and academic institutions, and representatives of the informal sector. These actors can all play a catalytic role for creative solutions.

Indeed, Japanese innovation can be applied to municipal recycling and composting. State-of-the-art solid waste management systems are being developed, underpinned by strong cooperation between national and local governments.

Even the organizing committee of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games has gotten into the act: It has a comprehensive sustainability plan inspired by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and includes such measures as extracting materials from discarded smartphones and other small electronic devices to make the Olympic medals.

Japan also is supporting the development of marine litter monitoring technology in cooperation with other Asian countries. Its authorities are working with producers to eliminate single-use plastics and promote biodegradable polymers.

The goal is to reduce the detrimental effects on marine and costal ecosystems on which many livelihoods depend, crucial in a region where 200 million people are reliant on fisheries alone.

Japanese innovation and technology can contribute much to the region’s solutions to eliminate plastics from our oceans. Through ESCAP, we can scale these efforts across the continent, working closely with our countries and partners to build a collective response to stop marine pollution in Asia and the Pacific and reclaim our “blue oceans.”

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/call-healthy-blue-oceans-asia-pacific/feed/0A Rural Sanitation Model That Workshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/a-ural-sanitation-model-that-works/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-ural-sanitation-model-that-works
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/a-ural-sanitation-model-that-works/#respondTue, 30 Jul 2019 09:47:26 +0000Liby Johnsonhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162647Research and experience across more than two decades in rural Odisha, India, show that an effective rural sanitation model requires both financial assistance and an integrated water supply. There are studies and field reports that have analysed the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) in terms of coverage and use of toilets in rural India. The official government survey, the NARSS […]

Raibari Bewa standing near the toilet, bathroom unit and collecting water from the third tap in Dudukaguda village, in Thuamul Rampur block, Kalahandi district of Odisha. On the walls, details of Swachh Bharat Mission benefits availed by her in Odia | Picture courtesy: Ajaya Behera

By Liby JohnsonBHUBANESWAR, Odisha, India, Jul 30 2019 (IPS)

Research and experience across more than two decades in rural Odisha, India, show that an effective rural sanitation model requires both financial assistance and an integrated water supply.

There are studies and field reports that have analysed the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) in terms of coverage and use of toilets in rural India. The official government survey, the NARSS 2018-19, shows that 93 percent of rural households have access to a toilet and 96 percent of those having a toilet use them. Critiques of the survey point out the contradictions between NARSS and micro-level assessments in different parts of India. Other studies point out issues related to how comprehensive the approach to sanitation needs to be, if SBM is to truly address the large scale problems of ill-health, malnutrition, and poor quality of life caused by poor sanitation practices.

The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation has already issued guidelines for follow-up components, such as the ‘Advisory on ODF Sustainability interventions‘. It is quite likely that with the Prime Minister and his government taking charge for the second term, the sustainability of the first generation SBM efforts will be given high priority. In this context, it is pertinent to throw light on some micro–level issues, based on more than two decades of experience in rural Odisha.

A rural sanitation model that works

Gram Vikas, the organisation I lead, started its work in rural sanitation in the year 1994. Our model of 100 percent coverage of all households in a village, all of them building and using household level toilets and a bathing room with piped water supply, has been recognised as a best practice nationally and globally.

Infrastructure alone is insufficient to sustain health benefits. Additional efforts are needed to motivate people to adopt safe sanitation practices...There are other aspects of personal hygiene and sanitation, including personal habits, disposal of child faeces, and menstrual hygiene; these need to be addressed by demonstrating workable models, accompanied by education

The integrated water, sanitation, and hygiene (WSH) intervention that we support rural communities with, is built on the following principles:

Participation of 100 percent of the habitation’s households; it is all, or none.

Cost sharing by the household, partially towards construction of the facilities, and fully for operations and maintenance.

Ownership and management by a village water and sanitation committee, consisting of representatives of all sections in the village.

A sanitation corpus fund built from a one-time contribution by all, towards providing cash incentives for future families in the village to build toilets and bathing rooms (ensuring 100 percent coverage at all times).

A maintenance fund through regular household fee collection, for maintenance of the piped water supply system.

In 25 years (up to March 2019), the Gram Vikas WSH model has been implemented in more than 1,400 villages, covering close to 90,000 households. The villages are financed primarily through the sanitation and rural drinking water schemes of the government, and Gram Vikas has mobilised private resources to fill in gaps.

What we learnt

Over the past two decades, working with rural communities of different types, we have realised that bringing about attitudinal and behaviour changes towards safe sanitation is not easy. When we began in the mid-1990s, saying that every house in the village will have toilets, bathing rooms, and piped water, most people laughed.

Between 1994 and 1999, we could cover only 30 villages—this resulted from our own efforts at motivating people, and not any felt desire on their part. Then started the gradual process of change—fathers of unmarried girls motivating future sons-in-laws’ village elders to take up the sanitation project; women taking the lead to convince their men to build toilets, and even stopping cooking for a day or two to make their husbands see reason; migrants who worked outside Odisha coming back to their own villages and motivating their parents, and so on.

When it comes to rural sanitation, government financial assistance matters

Between 1999 and 2007, the government’s support to sanitation, as part of the then newly launched Total Sanitation Campaign, was INR 300 per household, for below poverty line families. Support for community-led, piped water supply projects came much later, in the form of Swajaldhara in 2003.

The prevalent thinking among policy makers in the early 2000s was that financial incentives were not necessary to promote rural sanitation. This was based on the limited success of the subsidy-led Central Rural Sanitation Programme, that ran between 1986 and 1998.

Financial incentives to rural households for building toilets is more than a subsidy, it’s about society meeting part of the costs of helping rural communities build a better life. To compare, urban dwellers who may have built their own household toilets, do not pay anything for removing the human waste from their premises; municipal governments ensure sewage lines and treatment plants. The cost of this (which is borne by the government) is not seen as a subsidy. And yet, the upfront payment made to rural households to help build toilets is looked down upon as wasteful expenditure.

In 2011, the policy moved to a higher level of financial incentives to rural households for constructing individual household latrines, mostly likely in recognition of the fact that rural households needed the financial incentive as motivation to change sanitation behaviours. But today, with statistics showing 93 percent or more coverage of toilets, the policy prescription is likely to move to the pre-2011 phase–big financial incentives are not needed for building rural household toilets.

Our experience has taught us that nothing can be further from the truth. First, actual coverage of usable toilets is likely much less than what the numbers show. Second, households will need support for repairs and upgradation of the already built latrines. In addition, there are two categories for whom the financial assistance must continue: those who, for various reasons, have not constructed latrines so far; and new households that have come up in villages that have already been declared open defecation free (ODF).

Availability of water in the toilet is critical to encouraging use and maintenance of the facility

In most cases, where water is not available in proximity, the load on women to carry water has increased. A pour-flush latrine, the type mostly preferred, requires at least 12 litres of water per use. With 4-5 members in the household, the minimum daily requirement becomes about 60 litres, forcing women to collect at least three times the water they would otherwise collect. We have observed that without water in the household premises, women’s water carrying load increases to more than twice the pre-latrine times.

The addition of a bathing room, affords women more privacy, and a better way to keep themselves clean and hygienic. In most villages we have worked with, women especially, equate this part of their physical quality of life to what people in the city enjoy.

During the last few years, financial allocation for rural water supply has decreased. While the allocation to drinking water has reduced from 87 percent (2009-10) to 31 percent (2018-19), the allocation to rural sanitation has increased from 13 percent to 69 percent in the same period. This is definitely not a desirable situation, as noted by many.

Mainstreaming the community-owned and managed method of rural water supply will ensure equitable distribution

Doing this, rather than pushing for large water supply projects across many villages, will give rural communities and local governments greater control over managing their resources and meeting the needs of every household in an equitable manner. The Swajal programme of the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, which talks about village level, community-based water projects, is a step in the right direction. Much greater push is needed by the central government to ensure that the state-level apparatus moves to a more enabling and empowering approach in addressing rural drinking water needs.

A woman collects the drinking water from the third tap in Simlipadar village in Thuamul Rampur, Kalahandi | Picture courtesy: Ajaya Behera

Second generation challenges

The water and sanitation infrastructure, when first built, contributes to a substantial decrease in water-borne diseases in villages. These are borne out of several studies conducted in villages in Odisha.

After the initial round of benefits, we find that the infrastructure alone is insufficient to sustain health benefits. Additional efforts are needed to motivate people to adopt safe sanitation practices. The ensuing issues have been highlighted by many. For instance, changing long-standing beliefs and attitudes related to toilet use requires intensive hand holding, particularly for older people. There are other aspects of personal hygiene and sanitation, including personal habits, disposal of child faeces, and menstrual hygiene; these need to be addressed by demonstrating workable models, accompanied by education.

From Gram Vikas’ experience in Odisha, we have been able to enumerate several challenges that need to be addressed. Even when piped drinking water exists, households prefer to store drinking water. We have found that handling of stored drinking water is an area that needs better education.

Disposal of child faeces, especially by mothers who do not think the child’s faecal matter is harmful, is another area of concern. We are also coming across new forms of discrimination in households, where menstruating women are not allowed to use the toilets and bathrooms.

While issues related to personal hygiene and washing hands with soap are already quite widely discussed, the next set of challenges relate to safe disposal and/or managing liquid and solid waste at the household and community level.

A charter of demands

We hope that the next iteration of Swachh Bharat Mission will truly lead to a Swachh Bharat. Based on our experience, we would like to draw the following charter of demands:
.

Add a bathing room component to the design and costing provided in the national guidelines; increase financial support per household to INR 18,000 for new entrants; allow additional funding of INR 6,000 per household for those wanting to add a bathroom to their existing toilets.

Create provisions for repair or upgradation of toilets built, till 2018; provide for additional assistance to households whose toilets were built by contractors without involvement of the household.

2. Integrate piped water supply with sanitation at the household level, and facilitate greater community control over rural drinking water projects

Enlarge the scope for Swajal scheme by allocating more funds.

Where ground water availability challenges dictate building of larger projects, it will make sense to separate the pumping and supply, from household distribution of water. The former could be done centrally for a large number of villages, while the latter could be managed by the communities at their level.

Make individual household–level piped water supply the standard design principle for rural water supply projects.

Build community capacities to manage groundwater resources and undertake watershed and springshed interventions.

Integrate water quality management as a community–level initiative, by demystifying testing technologies, and creatinga wider network of testing laboratories.

3. Deepen and integrate WSH interventions for better health and nutrition outcomes at the community-level

Incentivise states to achieve stronger schematic and financial convergence between National Health Mission and the Integrated Child Development Services at the intermediate and gram panchayat level.

Incentivisestates toenable Panchayati Raj Institutions to play a greater role in the SBM process.

Allow for more active participation of civil society organisations as facilitators and implementors, to support rural community–based institutions to adopt sustainable sanitation interventions. Provide financial incentives to such organisations based on outputs and outcomes.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/a-ural-sanitation-model-that-works/feed/0Avoiding the Mistakes of the Asian Green Revolution in Africahttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/avoid-the-mistakes-of-the-asian-green-revolution-africa/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=avoid-the-mistakes-of-the-asian-green-revolution-africa
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/avoid-the-mistakes-of-the-asian-green-revolution-africa/#commentsThu, 11 Jul 2019 13:09:13 +0000Isaiah Esipisuhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162379Research scientists are studying groundwater resources in three African countries in order to understand the renewability of the source and how people can use it sustainably towards a green revolution in Africa. “We don’t want to repeat some of the mistakes during the green revolution that has taken place in Asia, where people opted to […]

Richard Taylor, a Professor of Hydrogeology from the University College London (UCL) (far left) is the principal investigator in a project to study groundwater resources to understand more how to use the resource to alleviate poverty. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah EsipisuDODOMA, Tanzania, Jul 11 2019 (IPS)

Research scientists are studying groundwater resources in three African countries in order to understand the renewability of the source and how people can use it sustainably towards a green revolution in Africa.

“We don’t want to repeat some of the mistakes during the green revolution that has taken place in Asia, where people opted to use groundwater, then groundwater was overused and we ended up with a problem of sustainability,” said Richard Taylor, the principal investigator and a professor of Hydrogeology from the University College London (UCL).

Through a project known as Groundwater Futures in Sub-Saharan Africa (GroFutures), a team of 40 scientists from Africa and abroad have teamed up to develop a scientific basis and participatory management processes by which groundwater resources can be used sustainably for poverty alleviation.

Though the study is still ongoing, scientists can now tell how and when different major aquifers recharge, how they respond to different climatic shocks and extremes, and they are already looking for appropriate ways of boosting groundwater recharge for more sustainability.

“Our focus is on Tanzania, Ethiopia and Niger,” said Taylor. “These are three strategic laboratories in tropical Africa where we are expecting rapid development of agriculture and the increased need to irrigate,” he told IPS.

In Tanzania, scientists from UCL in collaboration with their colleagues from the local Sokoine University of Agriculture, the Ministry of Water and Irrigation and the WamiRuvu Basin Water Board, have been studying the Makutapora well field, which is the only source of water for the country’s capital city – Dodoma.

“This is demand-driven research because we have previously had conflicting data about the actual yield of this well field,” said Catherine Kongola, a government official who heads and manages a sub section of the WamiRuvu Basin in Central Tanzania. The WamiRuvu Basin comprises the country’s two major rivers of Wami and Ruvi and covers almost 70,000 square kilometres.

She notes that scientists are using modern techniques to study the behaviour of groundwater in relation to climate shocks and also human impact, as well as the quality of the water in different locations of the basin.

“Groundwater has always been regarded as a hidden resource. But using science, we can now understand how it behaves, and this will help with the formulation of appropriate policies for sustainability in the future,” she told IPS.

According to Rajiv Shah, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, boosting irrigation is key to improving agricultural productivity in Africa.

“In each of the areas where we are working, people are already looking at groundwater as a key way of improving household income and livelihoods, but also improving food security, so that people are less dependent on imported food,” said Taylor. “But the big question is; where does the water come from?”

Since the 1960s, during the green revolution in Asia, India relied heavily on groundwater for irrigation, particularly on rice and wheat, in order to feed the growing population. But today, depletion of the groundwater in the country has become a national crisis, and it is primarily attributed to heavy abstraction for irrigation.

The depletion crisis remains a major challenge in many other places on the globe, including the United States and China where intensive agriculture is practiced.

“It is based on such experiences that we are working towards reducing uncertainty in the renewability and quantity of accessible groundwater to meet future demands for food, water and environmental services, while at the same time promoting inclusion of poor people’s voices in decision-making processes on groundwater development pathways,” said Taylor.

After a few years of intensive research in Tanzania’s Makutapora well field, scientists have discovered that the well field—which is found in an area mainly characterised by seasonal rivers, vegetation such as acacia shrubs, cactus trees, baobab and others that thrive in dry areas—can only be recharged during extreme floods that can also destroy agricultural crops and even property.

“By the end of the year 2015, we installed river stage gauges to record the amount of water in the streams. Through this, we can monitor an hourly resolution of the river flow and how the water flow is linked to groundwater recharge,” Dr David Seddon, a research scientist whose PhD thesis was based on the Makutapora well field, told IPS.

Taylor explains that Makutapora is known for having the longest-known groundwater level record in sub-Saharan Africa.

“A study of the well field over the past 60 years reveals that recharge sustaining the daily pumping of water for use in the city occurs episodically and depends on heavy seasonal rainfall associated with El Niño Southern Oscillation,” Taylor said.

According to Lister Kongola, a retired hydrologist who worked for the government from 1977 to 2012, the demand for water in the nearby capital city of Dodoma has been rising over the years, from 20 million litres in the 1970s, to 30 million litres in the 1980s and to the current 61 million litres.

“With most government offices now relocating from Dar Es Salaam to Dodoma, the establishment of the University of Dodoma, other institutions of higher learning and health institutions, and the emergence of several hotels in the city, the demand is likely going to double in the coming few years,” Kongola told IPS.

The good news, however, is that seasons with El Niño kind of rainfall are predictable. “By anticipating these events, we can seek to amplify them through minimal but strategic engineering interventions that might allow us to actually increase replenishment of the well-field,” said Taylor.

According to Professor Nuhu Hatibu, the East African head of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, irrigation has been the ‘magic’ bullet for improving agricultural productivity all over the world, and “that is exactly what Africa needs to achieve a green revolution.”

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/avoid-the-mistakes-of-the-asian-green-revolution-africa/feed/1Solar Collectors and Solidarity Change Lives in Argentinahttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/solar-collectors-solidarity-change-lives-argentina/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=solar-collectors-solidarity-change-lives-argentina
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/solar-collectors-solidarity-change-lives-argentina/#respondMon, 08 Jul 2019 08:13:56 +0000Daniel Gutmanhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162309“This is the best thing ever invented for the poor,” says Emanuel del Monte, pointing to a tank covered in black tarps protruding from the roof of his house. It forms part of a system built mostly from waste materials, which heats water through solar energy and is improving lives in Argentina. Thanks to him, […]

Volunteers install a solar water heater, made from recycled materials, with a 90-litre tank on the roof of a modest home in the Argentine municipality of Pilar, 50 km north of Buenos Aires. This unique thermal generation system was designed by Brazilian engineer José Alano, who did not patent it in order to facilitate its free use. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel GutmanPILAR, Argentina, Jul 8 2019 (IPS)

“This is the best thing ever invented for the poor,” says Emanuel del Monte, pointing to a tank covered in black tarps protruding from the roof of his house. It forms part of a system built mostly from waste materials, which heats water through solar energy and is improving lives in Argentina.

Thanks to him, hundreds of families in three poor neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the Argentine capital now have hot water for bathing. They used to heat water in pots but had abandoned the practice in recent years because of the high costs of cooking gas.

Del Monte, 32, his wife and five children live in an unpainted cinder-block house with a half-built brick perimeter wall in the neighborhood of Pinazo, Pilar municipality, about 50 km north of Buenos Aires."When they first tell you about it, you don't understand what they're talking about. Then you realize it's an opportunity you can't miss out on because it changes your life.” – Verónica González

Pinazo is a community of about 5,000 people that reflects the social deterioration in the 24 municipalities surrounding Buenos Aires, which together with the capital account for more than 13 million of the country’s 44 million inhabitants.

Neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the capital are home to 130,000 of the 200,000 people who lost their jobs in 2018 in this South American country, where the economy is in a deep crisis and poverty has climbed to 36 percent of the population, according to official figures.

The paved streets of Pinazo are lined with houses with roof tiles and gardens, run-down but clearly middle-class.

But if you turn down the dirt side streets, many of the homes are shacks made of boards, corrugated metal and even pieces of tarp, between empty dirt lots where cats, dogs and chickens wander about.

On some Saturdays, however, things get busy on several of the empty lots: dozens of volunteers, mostly young people, work for hours building solar heaters, together with many local residents.

The volunteers gather early on one side of the freeway from Buenos Aires and come to the neighbourhood together, in cars and trucks loaded with huge bags full of plastic bottles, cans, cardboard boxes, old mattresses and tarps.

Mariana Alio and her husband, Emanuel del Monte, stand in front of their house in Pinazo, a poor neighbourhood in the municipality of Pilar, in Greater Buenos Aires. On the roof they have a solar water heater, covered with mattresses and tarps that keep it warm, which provides them with hot water for bathing – a luxury their family had to do without because of the high cost of the cooking gas they used to heat water in pots. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

In addition, local residents at the site gather useful waste products, which they used to burn or throw into the polluted stream that gives its name to the neighborhood, since there is no garbage collection system.

Convened by the non-governmental organisation Sumando Energías, the volunteers say their goodbyes just before sunset, after building and installing on the roofs of up to four houses solar energy collectors and 90-litre thermal tanks, which keep the water warm because they are covered with mattresses and tarps.

“Each collector is made with 264 plastic bottles, 180 cans and 110 cardboard boxes. Most of the materials we use are reused,” Pablo Castaño, 32, who founded Sumando Energías in 2014, tells IPS as he walks around, supervising the work of the volunteers.

“I am convinced that sustainability is the only way to improve things for the poor. Social and economic solutions go hand in hand with environmental solutions,” says Castaño.

The head of Sumando Energías says he came into contact with the conditions in low-income areas while volunteering for another NGO, Techo (Roofs), dedicated to providing decent housing in slums, and became interested in renewable energy while studying to become an industrial engineer.

Castaño was born and raised in the southern province of Río Negro, near Vaca Muerta, the giant unconventional oil and gas field that the government is counting on to give a boost to Argentina’s declining economy. But he argues that “it is not the burning of fossil fuels that is going to save us.”

The solar collectors consist of 12 parallel two-metre-long PVC tubes covered with cans that absorb heat from the sun and heat the water inside the pipe. They are then wrapped in plastic bottles and cardboard.

Young volunteers from Sumando Energías build solar collectors in the Pinazo neighborhood. The NGO trains them in the development of clean energies that provide social, environmental and economic solutions in poor neighbourhoods in Argentina. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

“That’s how we generate the greenhouse effect that keeps the temperature up. The next step is to set up a closed circuit between the pipes and the tank, which is placed on top, as hot water becomes dense and tends to rise. After about 60 round-trip cycles, the water is hot, between 40 and 65 degrees (Celsius),” says Lucía López Alonso, one of the volunteers.

“What is generated is not electricity, but solar thermal energy,” she tells IPS.

Emanuel del Monte’s wife, Mariana Alio, who works at a greengrocer’s, says their family used to heat up water in pots using cooking gas, for bathing, but economic difficulties forced them to only use gas for cooking.

“Some people in the neighbourhood still think I’m crazy when I tell them that I now have hot water from a system built using waste products,” says Del Monte, who recently lost his job as a maintenance worker in Escobar, a municipality near Pilar, and today does odd jobs, mowing lawns or as a handyman.

In both Pilar and Escobar, slums exist side by side with summer homes and gated communities – some of them wealthy and all of them surrounded by walls and fences and protected by private security guards – where slum-dwellers can find casual work.

“(José) Alano didn’t patent it in order for his design to be used freely. We also follow his philosophy and uploaded the solar collector manual to our Facebook page, so anyone can access it,” Castaño explains.

In four years, Sumando Energías has built and installed 174 solar collectors in neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

In the poor neighbourhood of Pinazo, on the outskirts of the Argentine capital, young volunteers cover a 90-litre thermal tank with a layer of foam recycled from old mattresses, which helps keep water heated by a solar collector – also made with old plastic bottles and cans – warm. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Castaño explains that the system for making solar collectors with reused materials was designed in 2002 in Brazil by retired mechanic José Alano, who promoted it in the south of his country.

The activist says the units have a useful life of 10 years or more, but points out that they last longer because they do not have mechanical parts. In addition, the plastic bottles can be easily replaced when they eventually darken and no longer perform their function of maintaining heat.

The aim of the initiative is not only to provide a solution for poor families but also to pass on know-how about renewable energy to the volunteers, who donate 1,500 pesos (about 33 dollars), which are used to cover the cost of the materials.

“We also receive some donations from companies, but we don’t accept any from companies linked to the fossil fuel business,” says Castaño.

Sumando Energías is now working on prototypes of solar cookers that will allow families like those living in the Pinazo neighbourhood, most of whom depend on the informal labour market, to cut their dependence on cooking gas cylinders, which cost 10 dollars to refill.

“Many of us here have had 25-litre electric water heaters, but they tend to burn out because the electric power source is unreliable,” says Verónica González, a 34-year-old local resident who lives with her mother, three daughters and a niece, as she cuts plastic bottles alongside the volunteers.

Her family is among the latest to benefit from the solar heaters designed by Alano. “When they first tell you about it, you don’t understand what they’re talking about. Then you realize it’s an opportunity you can’t miss out on because it changes your life,” she tells IPS.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/solar-collectors-solidarity-change-lives-argentina/feed/0Chilean Schools Recycle Greywater to Combat Droughthttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/chilean-schools-recycle-greywater-combat-drought/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=chilean-schools-recycle-greywater-combat-drought
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/chilean-schools-recycle-greywater-combat-drought/#respondThu, 04 Jul 2019 05:11:16 +0000Orlando Milesihttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162283Children from the neighboring municipalities of Ovalle and Río Hurtado in northern Chile are harvesting rain and recycling greywater in their schools to irrigate fruit trees and vegetable gardens, in an initiative aimed at combating the shortage of water in this semi-arid region. And other youngsters who are completing their education at a local polytechnic […]

The principal of the Samo Alto rural school, Omar Santander, shows organic tomatoes in the greenhouse built by teachers, students and their families, who raise the crops irrigated with rainwater or recycled water in Coquimbo, a region of northern Chile where rainfall is scarce. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando MilesiOVALLE, Chile, Jul 4 2019 (IPS)

Children from the neighboring municipalities of Ovalle and Río Hurtado in northern Chile are harvesting rain and recycling greywater in their schools to irrigate fruit trees and vegetable gardens, in an initiative aimed at combating the shortage of water in this semi-arid region.

And other youngsters who are completing their education at a local polytechnic high school built a filter that will optimise the reuse and harvesting of water.

“The care of water has to start with the children,” Alejandra Rodríguez, who has a son who attends the school in Samo Alto, a rural village on the slopes of the Andes Mountains in Río Hurtado, a small municipality of about 4,000 inhabitants in the Coquimbo region, told IPS.

“My son brought me a tomato he harvested, to use the seeds. For them, the harvest is the prize. He planted his garden next to the house and it was very exciting,” said Maritza Vega, a teacher at the school, which has 77 students ranging in age from four to 15.

The principal of the school, Omar Santander, told IPS during a tour of rural schools in the area involved in the project that “the Hurtado River (which gives the municipality its name) was traditionally generous, but today it only has enough water for us to alternate the crops that are irrigated, every few days. People fight over watering rights.”

The Samo Alto school collects rainwater and recycles water after different uses. “The water is then sent to a double filter,” he explained, pointing out that they have a pond that holds 5,000 liters.

The monthly water bill is much lower, but Santander believes that the most important thing “is the awareness it has generated in the children.”

“There used to be water here, and the adults’ habits come from back then. The students help raise awareness in their families. We want the environmental dimension to be a tool for life,” he said.

For Admalén Flores, a 13-year-old student, “the tomatoes you harvest are tastier and better,” while Alexandra Honores, also 13, said “my grandfather now reuses water.”

El Guindo primary school, located 10 kilometers from the city of Ovalle, the municipal seat, in a town known as a hotspot for drug sales, performed poorly in tests until three years ago.

At that time, the principal, Patricio Bórquez, and the science teacher, Gisela Jaime, launched a process of greywater recovery. They also planted trees and native species of plants to adapt to the dry environment of the municipality of 111,000 inhabitants, located about 400 kilometers north of Santiago.

Four students, ages 13 and 14, talk to IPS about how the water reuse project has made them aware of the importance of taking care of water in the semi-arid territory where they live, in a classroom at the rural school of El Guindo, in the municipality of Ovalle, Chile. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

“The project was born because there was no vegetation,” said the teacher. Today they recover 8,000 litres of water a month. “Teaching care for the environment provides a life skill,” said Bórquez.

“Our school had the stigma of being in a place rife with drug addiction. Today in Ovalle we are known as the school with the most programs. We placed third in science,” she said.

Jaime described the experience as “gratifying” because it has offered “tools to grow and create awareness among children and the entire community about the importance of caring for water and other resources.”

Geographer Nicolás Schneider, founder of the “Un Alto en el Desierto” Foundation, told IPS that his non-governmental organisation estimates that one million litres of greywater have been recovered after eight years of work with rural schools in Ovalle.

In this arid municipality with variable rainfall, “only 37.6 mm of rainwater fell in 2018 – well below the normal average for the 1981-2010 period of 105.9 mm,” Catalina Cortés, an expert with Chile’s meteorology institute, told IPS from Santiago.

Schneider describes the water situation as critical in the Coquimbo region, which is on the southern border of the Atacama Desert and where 90 percent of the territory is eroded and degraded.

“Due to climate change, it is raining less and less and when it does, the rainfall is very concentrated. Both the lack of rain and the concentration of rainfall cause serious damage to the local population,” she said.

Innovative recycling filter

With guidance from their teachers, students at the Ovalle polytechnic high school built a filtration system devised by Eduardo Leiva, a professor of chemistry and pharmacy at the Catholic University. The filter seeks to raise the technical standard with which greywater is purified.

Duan Urqueta, 17, a fourth-year electronics student at the Ovalle polytechnic high school, describes the award-winning greywater filter he helped to build. Initially, units will be installed in eight rural schools in this municipality in northern Chile. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

The prototype recycles the greywater from the bathrooms used by the 1,200 students at the polytechnic high school. This water is used to irrigate three areas with 48 different species of trees. Similar filters will be installed in eight rural schools in Ovalle.

The quality of the recovered water will improve due to the filter built thanks to a project by the Innovation Fund for Competitiveness of the regional government of Coquimbo, with the participation of the Catholic University, the “Un Alto en el Desierto” Foundation, and the Ovalle polytechnic high school.

The prototype was built by 18 students and eight teachers of mechanics, industrial assembly, electronics, electricity and technical drawing, and includes two 1,000-litre ponds.

The primary pond holds water piped from the bathroom sinks by gravity which is then pumped to a filter consisting of three columns measuring 0.35 meters high and 0.40 meters in diameter.

“The filter material in each column…can be activated charcoal, sand or gravel,” said Hernán Toro, the head teacher of industrial assembly.

Toro told IPS that “the prototype has a column with zeolite and two columns of activated charcoal. The columns are mounted on a metal structure 2.60 meters high.”

View of the water cleaning filter designed at the Ovalle polytechnic high school and built by a group of teachers and students with funding from the government of the region of Coquimbo, in northern Chile. Each unit costs 2,170 dollars and it will promote water recycling in the schools in the semi-arid municipality. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

The water is pumped from the pond to the filter’s highest column, passes through the filter material and by gravity runs sequentially through the other columns. Finally, the water is piped into the secondary pond and by means of another electric pump it reaches the irrigation system.

Duan Urqueta, a 17-year-old electronics student, told IPS that they took soil and water samples in seven towns in Ovalle and “we used the worst water to test the filter that is made here at the high school with recyclable materials.”

In 2018, “we won first place with the filter at the Science Fair in La Serena, the capital of the region of Coquimbo,” he said proudly.

Pablo Cortés, a 17-year-old student of industrial assembly, said the project “changed me as a person.”

Toro said the experience “has been enriching and has had a strong social impact. We are sowing the seeds of ecological awareness in the students.”

“It’s a programme that offers learning, service, and assistance to the community. Everyone learns. We have seen people moved to the point of tears in their local communities,” the teacher said.

Now they are going to include solar panels in the project, which will cut energy costs, while they already have an automation system to discharge water, which legally can only be stored for a short time.

Eight schools, including the ones in Samo Alto and El Guindo, are waiting for the new filters, which cost 2,170 dollars per unit.

Schneider believes, however, that at the macro level “water recycling is insufficient” to combat the lack of water in this semi-arid zone. And he goes further, saying “there is an absence of instruments for territorial planning or management of watersheds.”

“Under the current water regulatory framework, the export agribusiness, mainly of fruit, has taken over the valleys, concentrating water use…and the government turns a blind eye,” he complained.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/chilean-schools-recycle-greywater-combat-drought/feed/0Indigenous Communities Head Towards Energy Self-Sufficiency in Guatemalahttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/indigenous-communities-head-towards-energy-self-sufficiency-in-guatemala/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=indigenous-communities-head-towards-energy-self-sufficiency-in-guatemala
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/indigenous-communities-head-towards-energy-self-sufficiency-in-guatemala/#respondWed, 03 Jul 2019 22:12:32 +0000Edgardo Ayalahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162278Because the government has never provided them with electricity, indigenous communities in the mountains of northwest Guatemala had no choice but to generate their own energy. Now electricity lights up their nights and, most importantly, fuels small businesses that provide extra income to some of the 1,000 families who benefit from the community energy projects. […]

Because the government has never provided them with electricity, indigenous communities in the mountains of northwest Guatemala had no choice but to generate their own energy.

Now electricity lights up their nights and, most importantly, fuels small businesses that provide extra income to some of the 1,000 families who benefit from the community energy projects.

These community projects have been implemented in four indigenous villages located in the Zona Reina eco-region, in Uspantán municipality in the northwestern department of Quiché.

The miracle of having light initially occurred more than 10 years ago in 31 de Mayo, a Maya indigenous village.

Thanks to financial cooperation from organisations in Spain and Norway, the hard work of the community and support from the environmental group MadreSelva, the first mini-hydroelectric plant began to operate there, harnessing the waters of the Putul River.

Given the success of the first community hydropower plant, other villages also decided to generate their own electric power: El Lirio, in May 2015; La Taña, in September 2016; and La Gloria, in November 2017.

And these four villages share their electricity with five neighbouring communities.

Life has changed today in these villages, local resident Zaiada Gamarro told IPS. She stressed the importance of electricity for women, who can now cook and perform other household tasks at night, for children, who can now do their homework after dark, and for businesses like small bakeries or shops that can now sell refrigerated products.

A similar plan is under way to build mini-dams in eight other indigenous villages in the neighbouring region of Los Copones. They will also share their electricity with 11 communities in the surrounding area, in a project for which the German development aid agency has contributed 1.25 million dollars.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/indigenous-communities-head-towards-energy-self-sufficiency-in-guatemala/feed/0South Africa’s First Carbon Farmhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/south-africas-first-carbon-farm/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=south-africas-first-carbon-farm
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/south-africas-first-carbon-farm/#respondMon, 17 Jun 2019 11:14:06 +0000Tim Christophersenhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162029Land restoration could attract large private investments in the fight against climate change over the coming decades, if Governments and the United Nations put the right incentives and conditions in place. When the goats on his farm had nothing more to eat, because the soil was eroded and most of the vegetation destroyed, South African […]

Spekboom (Portulacaria afra) is a small, succulent tree that is native to the Eastern Cape region of South Africa. It can easily be grown from cuttings, which can survive even in dry conditions (Photos by Tim Christophersen / Florian Fussstetter)

By Tim ChristophersenNAIROBI, Jun 17 2019 (IPS)

Land restoration could attract large private investments in the fight against climate change over the coming decades, if Governments and the United Nations put the right incentives and conditions in place.

When the goats on his farm had nothing more to eat, because the soil was eroded and most of the vegetation destroyed, South African farmer Pieter Kruger had to make one of the toughest decisions of his life. “I have always been a farmer,” he says, “but that moment in 2007, I knew that I could not go on. There was no more water. Zandvlakte is the last farm in our valley in the Bavianskloof, and our river had run dry before it reached my farm.” Pieter reluctantly gave up goat farming, and embarked on the Working for Water programme, a government pilot effort to restore degraded watersheds.

Over the next three years, he and a team of over 100 workers planted 1,500 hectares of his farm with millions of cuttings of an indigenous succulent tree, the spekboom (Portulacaria afra) which can grow well even in dry conditions.

“I have never regretted that decision”, says Pieter Kruger, “the trees are now well established, and in the big flood this year, we managed to keep runoff of water to penetrate the soil, improving ground water levels, instead of washing away our topsoil into the river.”

Tim Christophersen

Spekboom forests can act as ‘natural water dams’: in mountainous areas, the trees can grow even on steep slopes, and when rare rainfall occurs in the semi-arid regions of the Eastern Cape, they suck up all the moisture quickly, and can store if for months. Spekboom forests can serve as grazing and browsing areas of last resort for wildlife and livestock, even when all else has withered in a drought.

Sekboom trees also absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere faster than most other trees in dry conditions. However, farmers are usually not paid for carbon storage, water security and other essential ecosystem services which well-managed land provides for downstream water users, and for the global community. That could change, however, if Governments and the global community set the right conditions.

“Spekboom is an amazing plant. It can take root and regrow, just from simple cuttings from existing trees. It can quickly reform the soil because it continuously sheds a lot of leaves, which help to build up soil organic carbon”, explains ecologist Anthony Mills, who has published extensively on the sub-tropical thicket ecosystem of South Africa, one of the country’s lesser known plant biomes.

Spekboom is the dominant tree of the thicket ecosystem, a complex forest which creates its own microclimate. Thicket forests used to cover up to 5 million hectares across the dry areas of the Eastern Cape, until about 200 years ago, when massive overgrazing by goats and sheep started, and turned much of this ecosystem into a mere shadow of its former biodiversity and natural splendour.

“You can drive for four hours across degraded areas, which look like a savannah woodland, because all you see are some of the surviving jacket plum trees (Pappea capensis), which were originally part of the thicket ecosystem. The richness of this ecosystem is almost all gone today, but we could bring it back,” says Mills. “Today, more than 1.3 million hectares of severely degraded thicket landscapes in the Eastern Cape Province are ready to be restored to their former ecological functionality, which can also increase their productive use for livestock,” he adds.

Scientists from Stellenbosch University came upon the remarkable ability of spekboom to regrow in degraded areas almost by chance. In 1976, a farmer in the Kromport area of the Eastern Cape had planted cuttings of the sturdy tree on a steep slope of about 200 by 100 metres behind a barn on his farm, because he was trying to find a way to stop annual floods that were threatening his livestock. He soon discovered that not only did spekboom rapidly establish itself in the degraded soil, but it also stopped the floods very quickly after it had been planted.

In the foreground, one of the 330 demonstration plots for thicket replanting with spekboom (Portulacaria afra) across Eastern Cape. In the background, the few remaining jacket plum trees (Pappea capensis) on degraded land are an indicator of the former spekboom thicket ecosystem, which could be replanted (Photo by Florian Fussstetter)

“Some of the plants in this area are now over 40 years old, and we can see some of the original thicket ecosystem reforming. Other plants are joining, and birds and wildlife are returning,” says Mills. Although the area is rather small, it has yielded valuable scientific information, including on the amount of carbon stored below ground, in the roots of the spekboom plant and in the soil.

The discovery prompted the South African Government in 2007 to start what is arguably the largest ecological experiment in the world: they planted 330 plots of half a hectare (50 by 50 metres) with spekboom across the entire degraded area, almost 1,000 kilometres. Ten years after the planting, the plots have yielded promising results. In almost all the plots which were planted in degraded thicket and which had their fences maintained, the replanting with cuttings from spekboom has been successful, under a variety of conditions and planting techniques. The most important factor, according to scientists from Stellenbosch University and Nelson Mandela University, is that the grazing pressure from goats must be reduced for at least five years through fencing, and the cuttings need to be planted well and deep enough in the soil.

“By finding a way to boost agricultural productivity, restore a lost ecosystem and store carbon quickly and at scale, we would have a real win-win for farmers and for the global community”, says Tim Christophersen, Coordinator of the Freshwater, Land and Climate Branch at UN Environment.

The goal is to restore an area of thicket of over one million hectares, almost 200 times the size of Manhattan. There is potential to plant more than 2 billion tree cuttings across this immense landscape, providing work and income for thousands of people, for several years.

“This might sound daunting but given the opportunities for combining the real, long-term restoration of these degraded lands with diversified economic benefits to the local economy, the potential is amazing,” says Tim Christophersen.

The South African Government sees thicket restoration as one of the low-hanging fruits for the achievement of national climate and biodiversity goals, and recognizes that private investments are key. “We planted the pilot plots back in 2007 to attract private investors, by demonstrating that this can work,” says Dr. Christo Marais, Chief Director at the Department of Environmental Affairs, which runs the Working for Water programme. “We have studied this thoroughly, and we believe there are big opportunities for ecosystem restoration investments across South Africa.”

One of the next steps in scaling up the restoration could be to establish carbon and livestock farms, where several thousand hectares can be replanted with spekboom, and where income from carbon is combined with other income streams and economic activity.

“Farmers like to look over the fence, and see what their neighbour is doing,” says Pieter Kruger. “Having big demonstration plots on existing farms is important to spread the word that becoming a carbon farmer can pay off, both for restoring the land, and for making a decent return from the land,” he adds.

Even though Pieter has not yet received any compensation for the carbon he has sequestered on his farm, he remains optimistic. “We never give up,” he says. His Zandvlakte farm lies in the Bavianskloof, a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site, one of the most remote and beautiful areas of South Africa. Pieter and his family have also branched out into eco-tourism, where visitors can experience the success of Pieter’s shift from conventional farming to restoring his land first-hand.

“The global carbon market, including for carbon offsets, for example from the aviation industry, is starting to boom again, after several years of uncertainty. If current trends persist, carbon credits might provide some income for farmers like Pieter,” says Mills. Carbon credits are compensations which nations, companies, or individuals, can buy to offset part of their emissions which cannot be otherwise reduced. Offsets are not a replacement for ambitious climate mitigation action across all sectors. They can only provide a temporary solution while we deeply de-carbonize our economies. Ecosystem carbon credits often also have many other benefits beyond carbon, such as biodiversity, water, or better income options for farmers.

The carbon market is highly complex and volatile, and farmers should not only rely on carbon for their income. “We must try to blend different income streams for farmers, so that carbon credits are only one of several revenue streams. At the same time, the restoration of degraded lands will increase the value of the farmland in the long run and will improve resilience and ecosystem services for local communities, and for entire nations”, says Tim Christophersen. “We are running out of time for climate and biodiversity action, and large-scale opportunities like the thicket restoration in South Africa must be urgently explored. We would like to support the Government of South Africa and other partners, like Living Lands and Commonland, to realize the potential of the Eastern Cape thicket restoration, as we are moving into the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030.”

As the UN commemorates World Environment Day, UNDP would like to take this opportunity to commend Ecuador’s efforts to address climate change and its commitment to raising its climate ambition.

Ecuador is at the forefront of delivering climate action, and in the frontlines of Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) design. It has gone from an Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) presented in Paris, that defined targets for only two sectors: Energy and Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use, to a revised NDC 2020-2025 which includes both mitigation and adaptation.

This ambitious NDC is one of the first registered before the UNFCCC for the 2020 round, and the first to fully use the guidelines for NDCs agreed in Katowice at the end of 2018. It has several features worth highlighting:

Firstly, it has been formulated in a way that is fully aligned with national priorities as defined in the National Development Plan. It is likewise aligned to the 2030 Agenda, contributing to numerous SDGs;

Secondly, it has been developed in a highly participatory manner, gathering more than 150 institutions from public and private sectors, academia, and civil society, including over 1,000 participants.

Matilde Mordt

It is important to note that all relevant ministries were involved in the process, including also the national disaster risk reduction system, municipal and provincial governments, to ensure a whole of government approach and coherency between interventions;

Finally, UNDP´s NDC-Support Programme developed and applied a methodology for a gender-sensitive formulation of the NDC. This not only ensured equal participation of men and women in the process, but also provided tools to identify gender gaps, and proposed solutions to reduce inequalities and ensure a fair distribution of benefits.

This is also a first for the NDCs globally, and we would like to congratulate the Government of Ecuador for embracing this approach.

Throughout the NDC preparation process, UNDP provided a platform for integrating public and private sector, academia, and civil society in discussions, and we developed and applied innovative methodologies such as design thinking to enhance the contributions of participants.

We also integrated the support of sister UN Agencies during the process; reaching out to UN Women for gender mainstreaming and to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for technical assistance on agriculture, forestry and land use.

UNDP’s vast network of experts, knowledge and resources was used to facilitate the NDC preparation, including national level projects and global programmes such as the NDC Support Programme, REDD+ and BIOFIN. This is an example of our Global Policy Network in action.

UNDP has already been actively involved in the implementation of concrete climate actions in Ecuador for the last 20 years. Ongoing efforts will constitute building blocks for its NDC implementation going forward.

For instance, we support Ecuador to implement a combined GCF and GEF project in the forestry/REDD+ sector in the Amazon, that not only helps Ecuador comply with international climate and environmental commitments, but also supports communities – indigenous peoples and rural populations, men and women – to improve their livelihoods.

We are uniquely positioned to work in the intersection between environmental sustainability and poverty reduction, aiming precisely at leaving no one behind.

Ecuador´s NDC will now be implemented through an Action Plan, complemented with a Financial Strategy and Monitoring, Reporting and Verification system as the tracking tool. Sustained support from the international community to maintain this progress is key for allowing Ecuador to advance on this path. At UNDP we stand ready to continue supporting these efforts.

This links to the upcoming Climate Summit, to be celebrated in New York this September. We know that unprecedented efforts are required from all sectors of society to tackle the climate emergency – and we know that the task is urgent.

Ecuador has increased its level of ambition and will be pleased to continue sharing its experience and contribute to lessons learned and good practices.

Rhoda, 23, speaking on behalf of her community, at the Joint Parliamentarian Committee meeting in Kasungu, Malawi. This work was made possible with UK aid from the British people. Credit: WaterAid/Dennis Lupenga

By Mercy MasooLILONGWE, Malawi, Jun 4 2019 (IPS)

Giving birth is a life changing moment for women. It can be – when women have a safe and caring environment, positive and empowering – a moment to find a previously untapped inner strength.

But for too many women around the world, a lack of basic facilities mean that their lives and those of their babies are put at risk, risking death when they are bringing life into the world.

My fellow Malawian Rhoda, from Kasungu used her own lifechanging birth experience to help fight for the lives of future mothers and babies.

She was one of the women who bravely stood up and delivered an emotional speech at a community gathering attended by local politicians about her experience of giving birth on a roadside during the 25 kilometre walk to her nearest health centre.

Through co-ordinated advocacy, Rhoda and women like her succeeded in making their voices heard and convinced their elected representatives to dedicate resources to open a local hospital in their area.

She is one of a growing number of women who together are claiming their right to health and commit to challenging the status quo. With this growing momentum, things can really change for the better.

Rhoda said: “My experience giving birth on the way to the hospital was the last straw that made us demand this health centre. It was a frightening experience. We told the Member of Parliament that we were tired of empty promises. It was time to deliver.”

Rhoda’s experience could have so easily seen her join the heartbreaking maternal death statistics of Malawi where, 634 women die during or after birth for every 100 000 babies born alive. This is nearly three times the global average of 216 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births.

Mercy Masoo, WaterAid Malawi Country Director at the Joint Parliamentarian Committee meeting with the people of Kapyanga, Kasungu, Malawi. Credit: WaterAid/Dennis Lupenga

Fortunately, both survived the traumatic, dangerous and undignified experience but many others who also have to give birth in unhygienic conditions are not so lucky. Even those who manage to reach a midwife and a healthcare facility often face appalling infection risks.

Recent UNICEF-WHO data showed that 45% of healthcare facilities in least-developed countries (LDCs) do not have a source of clean water on site. Without clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene, it’s impossible for medical staff to deliver quality care.

A lack of these necessities results in the lives of patients being put in danger and contributes not only to the spread of diseases but also the rise of drug-resistant infections as more antibiotics are needed to battle illnesses that good hygiene might have prevented.

Life is changing for many communities here in Malawi as more and more raise their voices, share their experiences of hardship and discrimination with those in power and demand provision of basic needs such as accessible health centres with clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene.

Shockingly, one in nine people around the world still don’t have access to clean water close to home and one in three don’t have a decent toilet of their own. It is no secret that in areas where water is scarce it’s nearly always women and girls who face the hardship of walking long distances to collect what little water they can find.

A situation that makes them miss out on education and economic opportunities, and sometimes leaves them at risk of sexual assault and harassment. I know it’s possible for these shocking statistics to be turned around.

We need to hear women’s voices calling for water and sanitation in part because not having these basic rights disproportionately impacts women and girls

Without toilets, women’s freedom and dignity is compromised. Many spend their days worrying about where they will be able to find a toilet, often resorting to the bush or waste ground.

That is why, this week, WaterAid is joining with over 8,000 others at the Women Deliver conference in Vancouver. We want governments, the corporate sector and civil society to know that the voices and lives of women and girls matter.

We can’t and won’t achieve gender equality without addressing the lack of access to the basic human right that is water, sanitation and hygiene which millions of women and girls face worldwide.

Women like Rhoda are shining examples. And it is my hope that we will see more and more women standing in their power and advocating for their rights, despite unspeakable difficulty. Because when women and girls are given an active role in decision-making, transformation happens.

Countries would do well to consider this: our ability to preserve species hinges to a great extent on the actions we take to protect freshwater ecosystems. Safeguarding water for the environment is critical for biodiversity and for people.

Freshwater ecosystems are major biodiversity hotspots. We derive much value from them, even though we may not realise it. Wetlands purify drinking water; fish is one of the most traded food commodities on the planet; and floodplains can provide vital buffers that lessen the impacts of flooding.

Sustainable management of aquatic ecosystems (and of water resources in general) must aim to ensure that ecosystems continue providing these services.

A key approach for reversing this trend centres on ensuring that water continues to flow in a way that will sustain aquatic ecosystems, thereby supporting populations, economies, sustainable livelihoods, and well-being.

Pumping water by hand in mid-Western Nepal. Credit: Satyam Joshi/USAID

This means maintaining the right quality, quantity and timing of water flows – which scientists call “environmental flows”, or “E-flows” for short.

Managing tradeoffs

Water, through contributions to economic growth, environmental health and human well-being, plays a critical role in many of our broader sustainable development goals. It will therefore be necessary to consider some inevitable tradeoffs when planning for the sustainable management of water.

Take the expansion of irrigation for more intensive crop production, for example, which is essential for ending hunger. The alternative to increasing irrigation would be massive encroachment of agriculture on forests and other fragile ecosystems, thus undermining the protection of biodiversity.

At the same time, increased irrigation will, by removing water from rivers and aquifers, inevitably have some negative impacts on aquatic ecosystems.

The challenge is to maximize synergies and minimize tradeoffs, and to do so in ways that are transparent and equitable, based on scientific evidence. Undertaking detailed assessments of E-flows helps make the tradeoffs explicit.
The information derived from E-flow assessments can contribute to important discussions between different sectors and actors, helping to determine which outcomes are acceptable to society and likely to be sustainable.

E-flows assessment in action

For more than a decade, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) has been devising and steadily improving methods for E-flow assessment. In a 2007 project, IWMI partnered with World Wide Fund for Nature-India (WWF-India) to carry out the country’s first-ever holistic environmental flow assessment, focused on the iconic Ganges River.

The Indian government subsequently incorporated the concept of E-flows into the aims and objectives of the National Mission for Clean Ganga, the implementation arm of the National Ganga River Basin Authority.

Working with partners, IWMI researchers have now developed E-flow calculators, a family of software formaking rapid, assessments anywhere in the world from a computer.

More recently, IWMI researchers have further adapted their E-flow calculator for specific river basins, such as those in western Nepal. As a result of those developments, E-flow assessment is now poised for wider application in diverse settings.

In support of national efforts to better manage tradeoffs in water management, information provided by E-flow calculators can also contribute to tracking “water stress”.

For instance, how much freshwater economic activities withdraw compared to the total renewable supply, and how much water should be left in rivers to maintain basic ecological functions and ecosystem services.

Too much of our biodiversity depends on water for us to overlook sustainable water management as a key part of the solution to species extinction. The time has come for a more concerted effort to stem the loss of aquatic ecosystems and of the myriad species that inhabit them.

Post-secondary education relevant to the global water crisis is concentrated in wealthy countries rather than the poorer, developing places where it is needed most.

Meanwhile, water research is largely assessed by counting the number of papers published and their citation by other researchers rather than whether the work actually leads to successful, practical solutions.

Twin papers from UN University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health highlight and document these weaknesses in the global effort to address inadequate water supply and sanitation, problems that rank among the top-10 global risks.

There’s no global source of information on water-related academic activities. To uncover trends in water-related publications, therefore, we had to devise indirect measures using several databases, including one that indexes 22,800 journals, magazines and reports from more than 5,000 publishers.

Nor is there a list of water resource-related post-secondary programs. Similar detective work was required, therefore, to locate the world’s 28,000 or so universities that offer degrees in water-related programs.

Our most troubling finding at the end of the day: altogether too little training and research takes place where water problems are most acute. Instead, global water research relies on Western – particularly US – scientific outputs.

Globally, we found, water-related research is published in 88 countries but just two of them — the United States and China — accounted for 33% of the 1.2 million papers published between 2012 and 2017.

About 70% of the academic journals that publish water research are based in just four countries — the United States, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands; 2% are in China.

All 15 countries leading in publications per million population are among the world’s wealthiest, suggesting water research does not emerge as a reaction to water scarcity but, instead, to some economic value in a supply and sanitation industry expected to be worth $1 trillion (US) in 2020.

The average number of citations for any given paper dropped precipitously, from 22 in 2012 to just three in 2017. This suggests, at least in part, that lower quality papers are being written to conform with government sponsored policies on publication, or reflects increasing pressure in academia to produce research — publish or perish.

This pressure might be critical for researchers to survive, but it is hardly conducive from a development perspective.

Meanwhile, most universities offering water-related courses are in North America, Europe and parts of Asia. In Sub-Saharan Africa, which faces severe water shortages, very few postgraduate institutions offer recognised programs on water.

And many students from water-stressed countries who attend university in North America or Europe don’t return home after graduation, depriving their countries of badly needed expertise.

Any incentive, process or practice that encourages the return of these highly-qualified students to jobs in the water sector could benefit the home country.

Given the highly autonomous nature of universities and their faculty members, it’s unreasonable to expect widespread cooperation in curriculum design and delivery but some sharing of materials would be very beneficial.

We suggest that a consortium of universities offer large-scale water studies, courses or programs using the specific expertise of their combined faculty members.

Other recommendations: encourage more women to enter the water-resources field. And find better ways to convey in a practical way the research findings, learning and knowledge in research publications to actual users in need of the knowledge.

Teacher and teaching ratings should likewise be based on outcomes — including assessments by previous students at different intervals since graduation about the quality, content and relevance of their programs.

The bottom line: When it comes to water research, the publish or perish philosophy that drives many researchers must take second place to the goal of on-the-ground results, especially in the developing world, where there also must be a more structured focus on water education.

The UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) sets ambitious targets for improvement in water supply and sanitation. To achieve the water-related SDGs, however, we need to use insights into academic shortcomings to make reforms, and soon.

*Their papers, “Higher Education in the Water Sector: A Global Overview” and “Bibliometrics of Water Research: A Global Snapshot,” are available at www.inweh.unu.edu. UNU-INWEH is supported by the Government of Canada through Global Affairs Canada and hosted by McMaster University.

Colin Mayfield, is Senior Advisor, Water Education and Knowledge Management at United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), and Hamid Mehmood is a Senior Researcher*.

The Copenhagen Fashion Summit celebrated its tenth anniversary last week. The summit, which is often referred to as the Davos of fashion, is a key date in the fashion diary for those businesses with a pioneering vision to highlight issues and create solutions for a more sustainable industry.

And solutions are very much needed. The global garment sector accounts for two percent of the world’s GDP and has the capacity to make a huge impact both positive and negative upon environmental, economic and social issues.

Figures suggest that the fashion industry contributes more to climate change than sea and air travel due to the current throwaway clothes culture and labour rights are in many places in need of a dramatic overhaul.

In Bangladesh, for example, where the garment industry dominates the economy, many workers both live and work in inadequate conditions without any clean water to drink, a decent toilet, or somewhere to wash their hands.

WaterAid welcomes the commitment of the businesses attending the summit to ensure the positive impact of the industry which has vast potential to be a powerful force for change.

Changes which may well appear to be happening slowly but are being noticed. Much has changed across the world over the last ten years in terms of trends in the fashion industry – and not just fashion style.

There is much talk of an awakening within both business and consumers for more ethical and environmentally friendly products.

Eva Kruse, founder and CEO of Global Fashion Agenda, the organisation behind Copenhagen Fashion Summit, acknowledged that there were few industry leaders who recognised the importance of changing the way the industry produces, markets and consumes fashion at the time of the first summit; now, a decade later, more companies are beginning to integrate sustainable practices.

A Bangladesh garment factory.

Business leaders and key fashion brands such as H&M and Nike took steps towards better working conditions at the World Economic Forum at Davos in January, when they signed up to the CEO Agenda 2019 which upholds human rights in the workplace.

However, the agenda omitted access to water, toilets and hygiene for workers from one of its core pillars, which is a crucial oversight. The role that these three facilities play in ensuring ‘respectful and secure working environments’ is a fundamental human right – without them, any positive changes will be seriously diluted.

WaterAid attended the summit to support the trend for more sustainable fashion and promote the business value that can result from investing in and improving access to water, sanitation and hygiene for workers throughout the supply chain.

Our partners HSBC and WWF joined us as part of our combined action to support garment factories, tanneries and mills in China, India, Vietnam and Bangladesh to shift towards more sustainable production.

But still we don’t have enough action and especially not enough integration between environmental and social issues in the fashion sector – ‘the only constant is change’ let’s get ahead of the curve and consider these issues in an integrated way.

At our stand, people were very receptive to hearing about how social and environmental issues are interlinked and why a holistic approach is the best approach.

We all have a role to play in making access to these essentials normal for everyone, everywhere by 2030, and businesses are crucial in bringing about the step change needed to meet this global challenge.

Our aim is to ensure all business, no matter what sector they are in, are aware of the value that can result for enhance productivity and business continuity from investing in water, sanitation and hygiene for both their workers and surrounding communities.

In June 2018, as part of the ‘Sustainable Supply Chains Programme’, WaterAid and HSBC launched a new three-year project to deliver essential water and sanitation services in 24 apparel factories and the communities where the workers live in Bangladesh and India, from small artisanal workers to large-scale textile and leather factories.

In addition to improving living and working conditions for employees, the funding from HSBC will enable WaterAid to provide vital evidence about how the reliable provision of clean water, decent sanitation and hygiene is essential for the long-term sustainability of business and prove the financial return on investment.

The outcomes of this work will to encourage other companies to invest in these basics and take action in their supply chains.

In just over ten years’ time the world’s governments and international community will be held accountable for the meeting, or not, of the Sustainable Development goal of access to and management of clean water and sanitation for all.

WaterAid’s aim is to continue to raise awareness and support of fashion industry initiatives such as the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, HSBC and all businesses to recognise the human right of access to clean water and the broader business benefits – financial and reputational – that come from providing decent facilities for their employees.

Key Stats:

•

There are 4 million garment factory workers in Bangladesh, and 12 million in India.
• Women make up 80% of the workforce.
• WaterAid’s HSBC-funded ‘Sustainable Supply Chains Programme’ will improve the lives of approximately 11,000 people working in the garment industry in Bangladesh and India

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/putting-water-heart-sustainable-fashion/feed/0Bangladesh’s largest freshwater lake inching towards deathhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/bangladeshs-largest-freshwater-lake-inching-towards-death/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bangladeshs-largest-freshwater-lake-inching-towards-death
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/bangladeshs-largest-freshwater-lake-inching-towards-death/#respondMon, 06 May 2019 16:11:28 +0000Mohammad Zoglul Kamalhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=161510(UNB/IPS) – Kaptai Lake, the biggest manmade lake in Bangladesh, is heading for a tragic end as sediments fill up its bottom and waste materials continue to pollute it every day. The 688-square-kilometre lake, created by damming the Karnafuli River in Rangamati for hydroelectricity in 1960, has been providing livelihood for a large portion of […]

(UNB/IPS) – Kaptai Lake, the biggest manmade lake in Bangladesh, is heading for a tragic end as sediments fill up its bottom and waste materials continue to pollute it every day.

The 688-square-kilometre lake, created by damming the Karnafuli River in Rangamati for hydroelectricity in 1960, has been providing livelihood for a large portion of the local population through tourism, fishing, transportation and much else.

Pollution and the use of pesticides are playing big roles in the water body’s decline, environmentalists say.

The lake, connecting six sub-districts, is traversed by thousands of people every day. Waste and oil from the launches and boats go into it, apart from those dumped by people living on its edges, locals say.

It is unclear how much waste, including plastic and polythene, is dumped into the lake daily. Deputy Commissioner of Rangamati AKM Mamunur Rashid says he is not sure if there had been any cleanup drives.

‘Never been dredged’

But siltation has turned out to be the major concern. The lake has never been dredged in 59 years, says Commodore Mahbub-ul Islam, chairman of Bangladesh Inland Water Transportation Authority (BIWTA).

Although the lake’s average depth is nine metres, when the water level recedes, it becomes dotted with small shoals. Launches and steamers have to suspend operations until the water level rises.

It is not just affecting the people dependent on the lake but also hampering power production.

The 230-megawatt capacity hydroelectric power plant’s production has come down to 110MW, says ATM Abjjur Zaher, the project manager, noting that the situation will not improve until there’s adequate rainfall.

It is an alarming situation that calls for urgent and effective measures, local say. They are pushing for dredging but the idea is opposed by some environmental activists.

MA Matin, general secretary of Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon, a movement to protect the environment, argues that dredging is not a permanent solution.

The water is more or less stagnant when a dam is constructed, he notes. “If we remove silt now, the basin will again be filled up in another 10 years,” he says, recommending searching for alternatives.

Deputy Commissioner Rashid admits that there are pitfalls but insists that it will be impossible to overcome the situation without removing the silt.

He says the lake is gradually becoming unusable because of siltation. “We’ve written to higher authorities but without any result. Recently, a BIWTA team has conducted a survey of Kaptai area,” he says.

Landslide scare

People, pushing for dredging, are not realising that it will take time, Rashid says.

“You can’t just dredge the lake. More research is needed before action, and issues like landslides should be considered,” he tells UNB.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/bangladeshs-largest-freshwater-lake-inching-towards-death/feed/0Against All Odds, Indigenous Villages Generate Their Own Energy in Guatemalahttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/04/odds-indigenous-villages-generate-energy-guatemala/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=odds-indigenous-villages-generate-energy-guatemala
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/04/odds-indigenous-villages-generate-energy-guatemala/#respondTue, 23 Apr 2019 19:26:18 +0000Edgardo Ayalahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=161298In the stifling heat, Diego Matom takes the bread trays out of the oven and carefully places them on wooden shelves, happy that his business has prospered since his village in northwest Guatemala began to generate its own electricity. And it managed to do so against all odds, facing down big business and the local […]

Diego Matom, a member of the Ixil indigenous community, poses happily with his family, surrounded by fresh loaves of bread which were baked thanks to community electricity generation, which has given his business a big boost, in the 31 de Mayo village in the mountainous ecoregion of Zona Reina, in northwestern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo AyalaUSPANTÁN, Guatemala, Apr 23 2019 (IPS)

In the stifling heat, Diego Matom takes the bread trays out of the oven and carefully places them on wooden shelves, happy that his business has prospered since his village in northwest Guatemala began to generate its own electricity.

And it managed to do so against all odds, facing down big business and the local authorities.

“The bakery used to operate with a gas oven, but the cost was very high because baking took a long time; now everything is faster and cheaper,” Matom told IPS, surrounded by his freshly baked loaves of bread.

Matom, a 29-year-old Ixil Indian, lives in the village of 31 de Mayo, located in the ecoregion of Zona Reina, Uspantán municipality, in the northwestern department of Quiché, Guatemala.

The village, some 300 kilometers north of the capital, was the first of four in the area to build its own hydroelectric plant, driven by necessity, since the state does not bring basic public services to this remote region.

There is no piped water, and medical and educational services are scarce, as is the case in many rural areas of this Central American nation of 17.3 million inhabitants.

In the communities of Zona Reina, water for human consumption comes from the springs perched in the mountains surrounding the villages, which is stored in tanks from which it is piped.

The 31 de Mayo power plant, called Light of the Heroes and Martyrs of the Resistance, consists of a turbine that generates 75 kW and is powered by the waters of the Putul River, channeled by a two-kilometer concrete channel into a 40-cubic-meter tank.

From there, the water runs down with enough pressure to move the turbine in the engine room.

The name of the village recalls the date on which some 400 Ixil and Quiché indigenous families were resettled there by the government in 1998, after the end of the 1960-1996 civil war.

These families were part of the so-called Communities of Population in Resistance, which during the conflict had to flee to the mountains due to repression by the army, which considered them supporters of the left-wing guerrilla.

Once resettled, each family received a small plot of land, where they plant corn and cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum), of which Guatemala is the world’s largest producer and one of the top exporters.

Following the example of 31 de Mayo, three other communities in Zona Reina struggled to become self-sufficient in electricity: El Lirio in May 2015, La Taña in September 2016 and La Gloria in November 2017.

The machine house for the mini-hydropower dam in the 31 de Mayo village, which provides energy to some 500 families and has served as a model for self-generation from community dams to extend throughout the Zona Reina ecoregion in the municipality of Uspantán in northwestern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Unlike large-scale dams, which typically use 100 percent of river flow, community dams use only 10 percent, maintaining normal flow and preventing communities from running out of water downstream.

The four mini-hydroelectric plants supply the four villages where they are located and five neighbouring villages, benefiting a total of 1,000 families. But much remains to be done to promote access to energy throughout the Zona Reina, where there are a total of 86 villages.

But word is spreading and there is already another project approved for eight other villages, in the neighbouring ecoregion of Los Copones, that will share the energy generated with 11 neighbouring communities. The plan has received 1.25 million dollars in development aid financing from Germany.

The population in the Zona Reina is mainly indigenous, composed mainly of the Q’eqch’is, although they live alongside other Mayan peoples, such as the Ixil.

“Now that we have electricity we can do whatever we want, the kids come home from school and plug in their computers and do their homework,” said Zaida Gamarro, 31, a resident of La Taña.

Life used to be more difficult because at night the villagers used candles or lanterns for which they had to buy kerosene regularly, Gamarro told IPS during a tour of the villages that have community dams, located in a mountainous area where travel by road is difficult.

Several businesses such as the Matom bakery have also emerged, along with mechanics’ garages, carpentry workshops and several shops that can now use refrigerators.

“The business is going well, because we are located on the main street, and people are interested in our refrigerated products,” said José Ical, 38, a native of La Gloria and the owner of a small grocery store.

These efforts were made possible thanks to European development aid funds and local work by the environmental collective MadreSelva, in charge of designing and executing micro-hydroelectricity projects.

The families pay an average of 30 quetzals (about four dollars) per month for energy – less than what is paid by families in municipalities on the main power grid.

Countercurrent self-generation

The idea for local inhabitants to produce their own energy clashed with the interests of international consortiums and ran into resistance from mayors allied with those groups, said those interviewed in the communities.

A man shows the 27-cubic-meter tank of the La Taña community hydropower system, one of four installed in this remote mountainous region populated mostly by indigenous people in the northwestern department of Quiché, Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Specifically, they accused the Italian transnational company Enel Green Power, which runs the Palo Viejo Hydroelectric Project in the area, of carrying out a smear campaign against community dams.

A community hydroelectric plant, they said, runs counter to the system by which the state grants concessions to companies, which become the sole providers of those services.

The company, they added, maneuvered to divide the 31 de Mayo community, convincing some 100 families to abandon the project and thus weaken it, through a South African Pentecostal evangelist, Gregorio Walton, who offered solar panels to those who left the community project.

“There is a great deal of manipulation on the part of Enel, it wants to make people believe that the community project can’t work, that only the company can provide good electricity,” said Regina Ramos, from the community of 31 de Mayo.

Enel Green Power representatives did not respond to IPS’ request for comment.

“We don’t want companies like Enel, they just come to destroy our rivers and leave the community nothing,” said Max Chaman Simac, president of the Amaluna Nuevo Amanecer Association of La Taña.

Enel’s Palo Viejo power plant began to operate in March 2012, with a capacity of 85 MW. The consortium now has five hydroelectric plants in Guatemala. In total, it has 640 plants in Europe and the Americas.

The inhabitants of these villages maintained that the consortium was able to enter the region thanks to the permit granted by the then mayor of Uspantán, Víctor Hugo Figueroa.

“He was part of a strategy of land grabbing, in favour of extractive projects,” one of MadreSelva’s members, José Cruz, told IPS.

Other projects flourish

Meanwhile, the MadreSelva collective has sought to develop agroecological projects that help conserve ecosystems, especially in watersheds, and at the same time generate incomes for families.

Taking advantage of the organisation originally set up for the energy projects, a group of women now produce eco-friendly shampoos and soaps made from plants, ash, salt and other ingredients.

The families thus save money on basic products, and some of the women have also started to market them.

“We are encouraging people to plant home gardens, including herbs like rosemary, chamomile, etc., as well as the usual vegetables,” Mercedes Monzón, an activist in charge of these projects on the part of Madre Selva, told IPS.

Another initiative in this direction is the production of natural broths, based on rosemary, basil, dill, parsley and other aromatic herbs, which reduces the purchase of these products, whose wrappers bring pollution to the area.

While residents across Prince Rupert, British Columbia are once again able to get safe drinking water from their taps, the boil-water advisory lifted there in late January should not be forgotten. Canada is a freshwater-rich country, but the time for complacency on essential water issues has long passed. Most people living in Canada have access to safe water. But drinking water advisories in the country about unsafe water have been concentrated in First Nation communities.

As of December 31, there were six “boil-water advisories” and three “do not consume advisories” affecting eight First Nations Indigenous communities in British Columbia.

The Prince Rupert boil-advisory responded to an increase in the levels of cryptosporidium and giardia, two parasites that cause intestinal health problems. The contamination is thought to have been brought on by the combination of a severe drought in British Columbia during the summer and a large storm surge that soon followed.

Similar environmental and health problems can be expected to recur. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the onslaught of extreme weather patterns caused by intensifying climate change will only continue. The water crisis in Prince Rupert lasted for nearly six weeks and left 12,000 people without drinking water, according to CBC News. It has overwhelmingly affected Indigenous communities.

Tom Kertes, a volunteer organizer with Community for Clean Water–a grassroots organization in Prince Rupert — told CBC, “The city almost treated it like an inconvenience. Clean water is not about convenience or inconvenience. It’s about life and death and access to clean water is a human right.”

In June 2016, Human Rights Watch published a 92-page report that found that the Canadian government had failed to meet a range of international human rights obligations toward First Nations people and communities in Ontario by failing to remedy the severe water crisis.

We found that the water crisis in First Nations communities in Ontario has persisted for decades. A primary contributor to the problem is the legal discrimination that exists related to the regulation and protection of drinking water for First Nations reserves.

Access to water is a human right under international law, and Canada’s Constitution Act of 1982 provides for “essential public services of reasonable quality.” This means that the authorities have an obligation—as well as a moral imperative—to uphold this right.

Provincial and territorial regulations governing safe drinking water and sanitation, which operate to protect the health of most Canadian residents, do not extend to First Nations reserves. Other factors compounding the problem include insufficient and unpredictable funding, tainted source water, and lack of capacity and support for water system operators. As a result, water on many First Nations reserves is not safe.

In 1976, Canada became a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In 2016, the UN Committee that monitors compliance with the treaty expressed concern about “the restricted access to safe drinking water and to sanitation by the First Nations as well as the lack of water regulations for the First Nations living on reserves.”

The Canadian government has taken measures to address the water crisis in First Nations reserves. In 2018, the Federal government began direct engagement with the Assembly of First Nations to repeal and replace flawed drinking water legislation passed in 2013. Funding to address the problems has increased since our Ontario report was issued, with the 2018 budget including an additional $173 million. In Ontario, 26 advisories were lifted in 14 communities as of mid-2018.

Access to water is a human right under international law, and Canada’s Constitution Act of 1982 provides for “essential public services of reasonable quality.” This means that the authorities have an obligation—as well as a moral imperative—to uphold this right. It also empowers people to demand that their governments take concrete and deliberate steps to ensure access to safe and affordable water for the population.

Canada still needs to do more to secure the right to water for all of its people and to live up to its commitments to First Nations communities.

The right to safe drinking water is indispensable to a healthy life. Putting out a water advisory alerts residents to the problem, but doesn’t do anything to solve it. The federal government should be working closely with First Nation communities to ensure that money allotted for water improvement is used efficiently and that sustainable solutions are created. The provincial government can help by engaging indigenous communities and advocating for their right to clean water.

The Canadian government still has a lot of work to do, but it is critically important for the health of indigenous people to get the job done.